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The temptation to draw the comparison has some substance. In 2011, demonstrators explicitly demanded the end of regimes ruling over their respective countries, and the same is happening today.Moreover, both in 2011 and 2018-19, the protesters seem to be emboldened by the ongoing movements in other countries. Stephen McInerney, the executive director for the Project of Middle East Democracy (POMED), explained that “certainly what happens in one Arab country is seen elsewhere, and there are common frustrations shared across the region.”

It’s natural that boiling tensions inside countries and ongoing protests are giving way to the overarching claim that a new Arab Spring is underway. But that simplistic framing misunderstands the nature of political grievances and upheavals in the region. After all, they are similar to the protests in 2011, just as the 2011 protests are similar to those that happened in the decades before, and will be similar to those that happen in the future.

A ‘Spring’ implies in its history and usage, the new flowering of a spontaneous, overwhelming grassroots revolution that permanently changes the sociopolitical landscape of the countries and even the region. It paints a picture of a people awakened to the oppression they face and marching through the streets to demand justice.

But Arabs have been ‘awake’ to the corruption, misuse and abuse regimes have enacted upon them for decades, and have organized against it accordingly.

the same protests and chants that can be heard in Jordan and Sudan were yelled in the beginning of 2018. At both times and in both countries, the government cut bread and fuel subsidies in order to comply with loan conditions set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Egypt in 2017 also saw thousands take to Twitter and the streets to protest against similarly price hikes in bread following a government removal of subsidies, though the IMF continually insists it did not recommend these governments cut subsidies servicing poor and working class families.

To look at these continual mobilizations and isolate the movements happening now as an “Arab Spring 2.0” ignores the continual, inter-generational struggle for economic and political rights that has pushed continuously at the doors of old regimes. In their place, an alternate history is given whereby Arabs were resting, and were woken up.

“In Algeria, Jordan, and Sudan the regimes managed to dodge the original 2011 wave. The confrontation was avoided but popular discontent was not crushed, and the reasons for it not addressed. So this will continue to come back, until either a showdown happens or things change.”

It is less an ‘Arab Spring 2.0’ than a continuation of 2011’s protests, which were in themselves continuations of protests that occurred in the years before.

Ending practices of corruption and cronyism requires movements that aren’t framed as spontaneous ‘Springs’ of youth but as constituent parts of a broad-based, durable intergenerational call for justice from below. 

Only popular resistance from below and the reformists’ electoral victories could curb the hard-liners’ drive for total subjugation of the state, society, and culture.

The Green revolt and the subsequent nationwide uprisings in 2017 and 2019 against socioeconomic ills and authoritarian rule profoundly challenged the Islamist regime but failed to alter it. The uprisings caused not a revolution but the fear of revolution—a fear that was compounded by the revolutionary uprisings against the allied regimes in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, which Iran helped to quell.

once they took over the presidency in 2021 and the parliament in 2022 through rigged elections—specifically, through the arbitrary vetoing of credible rival candidates—the hard-liners moved to subjugate a defiant people once again. Extending the “morality police” into the streets and institutions to enforce the “proper hijab” has been only one measure—but it was the one that unleashed a nationwide uprising in which women came to occupy a central place.

the culmination of years of steady struggles against a systemic misogyny that the postrevolution regime established

With the emergence of the “people,” a super-collective in which differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and religion temporarily disappear in favor of a greater good, the uprising has assumed a revolutionary character. The abolition of the morality police and the mandatory hijab will no longer suffice. For the first time, a nationwide protest movement has called for a regime change and structural socioeconomic transformation.

Over the years, headscarves gradually inched back further and further until finally they fell to the shoulders. Officials felt, time and again, paralyzed by this steady spread of bad-hijabi among millions of women who had to endure daily humiliation and punishment. With the initial jail penalty between ten days and two months, showing inches of hair had ignited decades of daily street battles between defiant women and multiple morality enforcers such as Sarallah (wrath of Allah), Amre beh Ma’ruf va Nahye az Monker (command good and forbid wrong), and EdarehAmaken (management of public places). According to a police report during the crackdown on bad-hijabis in 2013, some 3.6 million women were stopped and humiliated in the streets and issued formal citations. Of these, 180,000 were detained.

This is the story of women’s “non-movement”—the collective and connective actions of non-collective actors who pursue not a politics of protest but of redress, through direct actions.

the uprising is no longer limited to the mandatory hijab and women’s rights. It has grown to include wider concerns and constituencies—young people, students and teachers, middle-class families and workers, residents of some rural and poor communities, and those religious and ethnic minorities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchis) who, like women, feel like second-class citizens and seem to identify with “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

The thousands of tweets describing why people are protesting point time and again to the longing for a humble normal life denied to them by a regime of clerical and military patriarchs. For these dissenters, the regime appears like a colonial entity—with its alien thinking, feeling, and ruling—that has little to do with the lives and worldviews of the majority.

The feminism of the movement, rather, is antisystem; it challenges the systemic control of everyday life and the women at its core. It is precisely this antisystemic feminism that promises to liberate not only women but also the oppressed men—the marginalized, the minorities, and those who are demeaned and emasculated by their failure to provide for their families due to economic misfortune.

A segment of Muslim women did support the Islamic state, but others fought back. They took to the streets to protest the mandatory hijab, organized collective campaigns, and lobbied “liberal clerics” to secure a women-centered reinterpretation of religious texts. But when the regime extended its repression, women resorted to the “art of presence”—by which I mean the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces within which to make themselves heard, seen, felt, and realized. Simply, women refused to exit public life, not through collective protests but through such ordinary things as pursuing higher education, working outside the home, engaging in the arts, music, and filmmaking, or practicing sports.

At this point in time, Iran is far from a “revolutionary situation,” meaning a condition of “dual power” where an organized revolutionary force backed by millions would come to confront a crumbling government and divided security forces. What we are witnessing today, however, is the rise of a revolutionary movement—with its own protest repertoires, language, and identity—that may open Iranian society to a “revolutionary course.”

The disproportionate presence of the young—women and men, university and high school students—in the streets of the uprising has led some to interpret it as the revolt of generation-Z against a regime that is woefully out of touch. But this view overlooks the dissidence of older generations, the parents and families that have raised, if not politicized, these children and mostly share their sentiments. A leaked government survey from November 2022 found that 84 percent of Iranians expressed a positive view of the uprising. If the regime allowed peaceful public protests, we would likely see more older people on the streets.

Although some workers have joined the protests through demonstrations and labor strikes, a widespread labor showdown has yet to materialize. This may not be easy, because the neoliberal restructuring of the 2000s has fragmented the working class, undermined workers’ job security (including the oil sector), and diminished much of their collective power. In their place, teachers have emerged as a potentially powerful dissenting force with a good degree of organization and protest experience.

Shopkeepers and bazaar merchants have also joined the opposition. In fact, they surprised the authorities when at least 70 percent of them, according to a leaked official report, went on strike in Tehran and 21 provinces on 15 November 2022 to mark the 2019 uprising. Not surprisingly, security forces have increasingly been threatening to shut down their businesses.

Protesters in the Arab Spring fully utilized existing cultural resources, such as religious rituals and funeral processions, to sustain mass protests. Most critical were the Friday prayers, with their fixed times and places, from which the largest rallies and demonstrations originated. But Friday prayer is not part of the current culture of Iran’s Shia Muslims (unlike the Sunni Baluchies). Most Iranian Muslims rarely even pray at noon, whether on Fridays or any day. In Iran, the Friday prayer sermons are the invented ritual of the Islamist regime and thus the theater of the regime’s power. Consequently, protesters would have to turn to other cultural and religious spaces such as funerals and mourning ceremonies or the Shia rituals of Moharram and Ramadan.

During the Green revolt of 2009, the ruling hard-liners banned funerals and prevented families from holding mourning ceremonies for their loved ones

the hard-line parliament passed an emergency bill on 9 October 2022 “adjusting” the salaries of civil servants, including 700,000 pensioners who in late 2017 had turned out in force during a wave of protests. Newly employed teachers were to receive more secure contracts, sugarcane workers their unpaid wages, and poor families a 50 percent increase in the basic-needs subsidy.

beating, killing, mass detention, torture, execution, drone surveillance, and marking the businesses and homes of dissenters. The regime’s clampdown has reportedly left 525 dead, including 71 minors, 1,100 on trial, and some 30,000 detained. The security forces and Basij militia have lost 68 members in the unrest.

The regime’s suppression and the protesters’ pause are likely to diminish the protests. But this does not mean the end of the movement. It means the end of a cycle of protest before a trigger ignites a new one. We have seen these cycles at least since 2017. What is distinct about this time is that it has set Iranian society on a “revolutionary course,” meaning that a large part of society continues to think, imagine, talk, and act in terms of a different future. Here, people’s judgment about public matters is often shaped by a lingering echo of “revolution” and a brewing belief that “they [the regime] will go.” So, any trouble or crisis—for instance, a water shortage— is considered a failure of the regime, and any show of discontent—say, over delayed wages—a revolutionary act. In such a mindset, the status quo is temporary and change only a matter of time.

There are, of course, local leaders and ad hoc collectives that communicate ideas and coordinate actions in the neighborhoods, workplaces, and universities. Thanks to their horizontal, networked, and fluid character, their operations are less prone to police repression than a conventional movement organization would be. This kind of decentralized networked activism is also more versatile, allows for multiple voices and ideas, and can use digital media to mobilize larger crowds in less time. But networked movements can also suffer from weaker commitment, unruly decisionmaking, and tenuous structure and sustainability. For instance, who will address a wrongdoing, such as violence, committed in the name of the movement? As a result, movements tend to deploy a hybrid structure by linking the decentralized and fluid activism to a central body. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement has yet to take up this consideration.

a leadership organization—in the vein of Polish Solidarity, South Africa’s ANC, or Sudan’s Forces of Freedom and Change—is not just about articulating a strategic vision and coordinating actions. It also signals responsibility, representation, popular trust, and tactical unity.

if the revolutionary movement is unwilling or unable to pick up the power, others will. This, in fact, is the story of most of the Arab Spring uprisings—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, for instance. In these experiences, the protagonists, those who had initiated and carried the uprisings forward, remained mostly marginal to the process of critical decisionmaking while the free-riders, counterrevolutionaries, and custodians of the status quo moved to the center.

Things are unlikely to go back to where they were before the uprising. A paradigm shift has occurred in the Iranian subjectivity, expressed most vividly in the recognition of women as transformative actors and the “woman question” as a strategic focus of struggle.

Those who expect quick results will likely be dispirited. But the country seems to be on a new course.

“We did not own up to it after 9/11 because we feared you would abandon or treat us as the enemy,” the Saudi senior official conceded. “And we were in denial.”

as the Saudis described it to me, this new approach to grappling with their past is part of the leadership’s effort to make a new future for their country, including a broad-based economic reform program

The new leadership, like their predecessors, blames Iran for regional instability and the many conflicts going on.

it is an open question as to whether the Saudi people have been sufficiently prepared at all relevant levels in terms of education and skills to compete in the world economy, as they will need to do in a modernized economy. If not, social tensions and unrest may arise among those who are not prepared to compete.

For many years, I was accustomed to Saudi officials being vague and ambiguous. Now, our interlocutors were straightforward and business-like in discussing their past and their future plans. In past decades, my impression had been that the Saudis did not work hard. Now a team of highly educated, young ministers works 16- to 18-hour days on refining and implementing a plan to transform the country. The plan is the brainchild of Mohammad bin Salman and focuses both on domestic and regional fronts. Salman and his ministers exude commitment and energy.

Riyadh views modernization as the vehicle through which the Saudi state, at long last, can confront and defeat extremism, foster a dynamic private sector and master the looming economic challenges

Their Vision 2030 and National Transformation Program 2020 focus on shrinking the country's enormous bureaucracy, reducing and ultimately removing subsidies, expanding the private sector including attracting investment from abroad by becoming more transparent and accountable and by removing red tape.

Israel and Saudi Arabia share a similar threat perception regarding Iran and ISIL, and that old hostility need not preclude greater cooperation between the two states going forward

On some levels, the prospects for planned reforms are more promising in Saudi Arabia than they are in most other parts of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has oil reserves and is not roiled in conflict: two important advantages

if the reform effort does work, Saudi Arabia is poised to become more powerful than before, enabling it to play a bigger role in regional dynamics including in balancing Iran and perhaps negotiating about ending the civil wars in the region. A true change in Saudi Arabia’s policy of supporting Islamist extremists would be a turning point in the effort to defeat them

“The government wants to create a digital Gestapo.”

As the MIT evolves, it does impeccable media relations to convince the AKP’s voter base that it is an indispensable institution for them. Moreover, that public image change would surely be an asset for the AKP as long as it is in power. Now, AKP elites must ask themselves, will they be proud and content with our new institution when they are no longer in government?

The decline in the level of consumption was not counteracted by an increase in the level of exports in goods and services. This is reflected in the value of Egyptian exports, which reached 47.45 billion USD in 2018, a decrease of 1.66 billion USD compared to 2013. Other indicators also reflect a worsening international competitive position. For example, the trade deficit ballooned from -6.34% of the GDP in 2013 to -10.45% of the GDP in 2018

the regime did not invest in the development of the manufacturing sector, and it did not lay down the foundation for sustainable, long-term economic growth

The growth of the GDP is primarily driven by government spending on mega infrastructure projects (spearheaded by the military), leading to a boom in the construction sector. Government spending is financed by a bloated public debt, the burden of which is disproportionality shouldered by the lower segments of society.

the military directly employs 19.2% of the labour force. This makes the military the second largest employer in the country, after the public sector that employs 5.6 million.

projects include much-publicised mega infrastructure projects, with dubious economic benefit, the most notable of which is the new administrative capital. The construction sector, which is closely connected to the military led projects, played an important role in generating economic growth. In 2018, it is estimated to have grown by 8.9%, making it the number one contributor to the GDP growth

growth of the GDP is not driven by a dynamic private sector, but mainly by a massive military led construction spree, and mega-infrastructure projects that have little positive impact on increasing the competitiveness of the Egyptian economy

the unemployment rate, which reached 8.1% by the first quarter of 2019, the lowest in 10 years. This drop in the level of unemployment, however, requires some additional qualification. The rate of utilization, which measures the number of workers employed for at least one hour per week as a percentage of the population, has dropped from 44.5% to 39%. This is also accompanied by a reduction in the level of workforce participation from 46.4% to 41.6%, indicating a reduction in the level of those seeking work, rather than an increase in the number of available jobs. Loss of hope should be credited with the drop in the level of unemployment, not improved economic conditions.

profits generated from business owned by the armed forces are exempt from taxation, under law 96 (2015). This means that the government is shifting the burden on the shoulders of the poor, as they finance the military construction spree, which in-turn is used to enrich the military elites and other regime insiders

as debt continues to pile up, the pressure on the poor will continue to rise, as the government continues to cut social spending. This will reduce the level of effective local demand, leading to greater pressure on the private sector. In addition, if the construction spree continues, the possibility of overcapacity and over-accumulation of capital in the construction sector becomes more prominent. In essence, a bubble that is bound to burst.

When one looks in detail at the data provided by the World Bank theimpression is certainly positive and some notable achievements have been realizedby the Tunisian regime in the social sphere as well. Poverty rates declined from 7.7per cent in 1984, three years before Ben Ali came to power, to 3.8 per cent in 2005.Literacy rates went up from a low 48 per cent in 1984 to 78 per cent in 2008 andwomen were included in this literacy drive

the Tunisian regime wasable to increase its spending on education and health, apparently confirming thevalidity of the model of ‘social liberalism’ given that in 2011 its Index of HumanDevelopment was still higher than its North African neighbours

While the fundamentals of the economymight indeed have been good enough for global markets and international investorsand trading partners, the economic miracle of Tunisia had a very dark side whereunder-employment, unemployment, difficult access to the labour market, incomeinequalities and wide regional gaps were the main features

if the figures published by the interimgovernment after the revolution are accurate, ‘the unemployment rate among youngpeople from 18 to 19 almost rose to 30 per cent in 2009, and soared to 45 per cent inthe case of higher education graduates’.

thecomplexity of the Ben Ali period and how to ‘read’ it increases if one looks at thefact that between 1995 and 1998 the Caisse 26 – 26 (a national solidarity fund)implemented a number of development projects in the area of Sidi Bouzid and inpoorer regions such as the one around Gafsa, but after 2000 no further projects werelaunched in that region partly because from that moment the funds in the Caissewere used by Ben Ali’s inner circle to sustain their economic activities

a predatory economicsystem with members of the president’s family and close collaborators takingadvantage of these networks of patronage to acquire an increasingly larger slice ofthe economy

there was very littlethat was predictable about the uprising and the fall of the regime, and even withthe benefit of hindsight it remains quite difficult to find a causal mechanism toaccount for the success of the Tunisian uprising because events could have turnedout very differently

the same corrupt practicesalienated many working-class youth who, rather than becoming fully de-politicized,chose ‘below-the-radar’ social activism based around loosely structured socialnetworks and developed a particular dislike for state authorities, a factor that wouldbe useful when fighting running battles with the police during the uprising

the regime monitored Publinets veryclosely and periodically blocked access to a number of websites, but the point here isthat the regime also inadvertently improved not only the skills necessary foreconomic growth, but also those necessary for anti-regime online mobilization

For the supporters of the democratization paradigm, there was no doubt that theBen Ali regime seemed to keep the promises of democratic gradualism. Initially, itsslow pace was explained as necessary in order to avoid the problems that Algeria hadencountered in the same period when the country liberalized the political systemquite abruptly and, in hindsight, with catastrophic consequences

Ultimately the authoritarian resilience paradigm has been more fruitful inexplaining that the regime survived thanks to a mix of co-optation and repressionwhere rhetorical commitment to democracy and human rights was far from genuine,but does not capture the whole story because it does not pay sufficient attention tohow society reacted to sustained repression of dissent

there was an almost hidden, but very significant increase inIslamization based on the adoption of personal pious behaviour that was overtlya-political, but had quite clear anti-regime overtones

the increasing disconnect between thevalues of the ruling elites together with an urban-based, French-speaking milieu anda large part of the population which both lived by and wished society to be moreattuned to Arab-Muslim values

such behaviour was also a personalact of defiance against an authoritarian regime that did not perform its duties and wasmired in what many saw as decadence and corruption

The events of 2008 in themining district of Gafsa (Allal, 2010) is probably the best known episode ofanti-regime social mobilization in Tunisia during the Ben Ali years, as the wholedistrict took to the streets and faced down the security services in order to protestagainst the hiring policies and working conditions in the local mines. What issignificant about the protest is that it was not simply the workers taking to the streets.The whole population of the area was on board with this protest, which was brutallyput down. There are however other smaller incidents that occurred throughout thecountry (Chomiak & Entelis, 2011) and that indicated that social peace wasa fabrication of the regime

Upgradedauthoritarianism (Heydemann, 2007) was the notion that many scholars utilized toargue that authoritarian ruling elites were, paradoxically, strengthening their grip onthe different countries through the adoption of political and economic liberalreforms that were subsequently deprived of any substance and meaning and hijackedfor the elites’ own benefit. One of the masters of such authoritarian upgrading wascertainly Ben Ali, who in the process also managed to project an international imageof a secular and liberal modernizer bent on slowly constructing a democraticpolitical system

liberaleconomic reforms of the late 2000s resulted in growth in the economy while at thesame time rewarding social groups and clan members most loyal to the president,but also generated an economically and culturally globally connected middle class,which developed its own mechanisms to voice political dissent, but had benefited inthe 1990s from the liberalization of the economy that Ben Ali had implemented toget the country out of stagnation

the promulgation of secularlegislation out of kilter with the values of the majority of the population and theespousal of a rhetoric of modernization that clashed with the everyday reality ofhuman rights abuses, elitist consumerism and corruption, saw the emergence ofpublic expressions of a social pious Islamism that made important inroads inTunisian society while going almost undetected

In neighborhoods like this one, with winding roads and haphazard rows of buildings, the elevated highway provides a watchtower for the state.

Rather than connecting informal districts to utilities and providing funds to upgrade housing, the government prefers to relocate residents to satellite cities on the outskirts. As residents of these areas grow poorer and more desperate under crushing austerity measures, the government would rather see them housed in isolated contingents in the desert, thus eliminating the prospect that they could participate in a mass mobilization, as happened a decade ago.

Building or repairing roads offers a relatively quick and easy way for a government to demonstrate progress, something the young regime would have been eager to do to establish some semblance of legitimacy.

the megaprojects. Work began on a $4.2 billion expansion of the Suez Canal in August 2014. The crews responsible for the canal expansion had not yet set down their shovels when construction began on the world’s widest cable-stayed bridge, which now stretches across the Nile in central Cairo. Its six lanes in each direction are inaccessible to most commuters who cannot afford to pay the 20 Egyptian pound ($1.27) toll. But those who tuned in to public television on New Year’s Eve were treated to a spectacle of fireworks choreographed to nationalist music above its towering pylons and a floating portrait of the president.

Located some 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Cairo, the New Administrative Capital is Al Sisi’s crown jewel. Contractors began work on the project in 2015. When finished, the luxe megacity will be almost as large as Singapore and boast a series of artificial lakes, an amusement park four times the size of Disneyland, and the tallest skyscraper on the continent. But the first phase alone, slated for completion in 2022 (although engineers working on the project say that construction is far behind schedule), will cost $45 billion — an unfathomable sum to anyone, perhaps, but more dissonant still for the more than 60 million Egyptians who depend on shrinking subsidies for their daily bread.

Television commercials starring Egyptian celebrities and billboards stationed along every road in the nation depict imagined lives in lush, gated communities backdropped by gleaming glass towers and bluer skies than dust-choked Cairo has ever seen. They are part of what architect Adham Selim describes as a practice of “ruling through drawing,” in which the government produces images of the future as a means of exerting greater control over the present and the past. “The continuous act of drawing the world-to-be is the way in which authority sustains a stable worldview, in which it places itself as an external to the world it intends to change, and rule,”

Al Sisi longs to be remembered as the ruler who snatched Egypt from the mouth of the Muslim Brotherhood and built a new Cairo in its wake. To this end, he is curating an archive that will be taught in the future.

Ismail borrowed so excessively from foreign lenders to realize his vision that when a collapse in the price of cotton left Egypt unable to repay its debts, European powers had him deposed. Then Britain invaded Egypt to protect its interests, starting a decadeslong occupation.

Successive Egyptian administrations have tried to decentralize Cairo, building generation after generation of satellite cities meant to entice upper- and middle-class Cairenes out of the urban core. The cities 10th of Ramadan and 6th of October, located east and west of Cairo, respectively, built under Sadat, and Madinaty and New Cairo (not to be confused with the New Administrative Capital), scattered to the east and started under Mubarak, sit half-empty, having never reached their target populations — or anything close.

Yahia Shawkat, author of “Egypt’s Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space,” estimates that 33,000 families were victims of forced eviction under Mubarak between 1997 and 2012. Under Al Sisi, the Ministry of Housing now boasts that it has relocated 60,000 families between 2018 and 2020 alone

When the government wanted to demolish informal housing on Warraq Island, located in the center of the Nile river in Cairo and home to 90,000 people, it sent security forces with bulldozers in the predawn hours of July 16, 2017, while most residents were still asleep. Heba Nagaa Otmorsi, a resident of the island, told The Guardian that her house had been demolished while she was at work. “It was our neighbors who rescued the children,” she said. Clashes on the island left one resident dead and dozens injured.

“People living in these semi-autonomous neighborhoods are always blamed for some sort of social urban ill,”

In January 2021, several high-level government officials laid the cornerstone of the Cairo Eye in Zamalek, one of Cairo’s wealthiest neighborhoods. One-third of Al Masallah Garden, a 15,000-square-meter (16,500-square-yard) historic park, will be destroyed to make way for the 120-meter-tall (132-yards) observation wheel, surrounded by shops, entertainment, restaurants, and a two-story parking garage.

Recent projects have disrupted Khedival Cairo and Mamluk-era tombs in the City of the Dead. A recent announcement that graves around Imam Al Shafi’i Mosque will be moved to make way for a bridge project has left Hussein Omar heartbroken at the prospect of losing his family mausoleum, where generations have been laid to rest since his great-great-grandfather bought the plot in 1924. It feels like a “concerted assault on the fundamental relationship that Egyptians have with their past,” he says. A plot that has belonged to his maternal grandmother’s family since the 19th century is even nearer to the site of the scheduled bridge project. There is no way of knowing if either plot will survive the new construction.

Anti-Black racism has only increased in Algeria with the arrival of tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Black, largely clandestine, migrants over the last two decades, who enter Algeria for educational or economic opportunities, or more often, to travel through the country en route to Europe.

20-25% of Algerians are native Amazigh speakers (Tamazight), and many more are Arabized Amazighs. The indigenous Amazighs have been struggling for equality since independence against a state determined to impose an Arab Muslim identity on the country’s entire population

When Algerians think of “racial” discrimination, it is likely that they first think of the treatment Algerian Arabs and Amazighs received at the hands of the French during the colonial period (1830-1962), and afterwards in France.27Kamel Daoud, “Black in Algeria? Then You’d Better be Muslim” The New York Times, May 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/opinion/kamel-daoud-black-in-algeria-then-youd-better-be-muslim.html . See also Seloua Luste Boulbina, “Si tu desires te Moquer du Noir: Habille-le en rouge”, Middle East Eye, 24 November 2018. https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/opinion-fr/si-tu-desires-te-moquer-du-noir-habille-le-en-rouge-0 The debate over Algeria as a post-colonial society has been fully engaged. However, in another sign of the invisibility of Algeria’s black citizens, consideration of Algeria as a post-slave society – and what that means for black Algerians today – has not

Black people, who were present in southern Algeria even before the 13- century-long  trans-Saharan slave trade, can be considered to be as indigenous to Algeria as the Amazigh population.

following a regional trend to repress diversity issues, the Algerian government has never taken a census to ascertain the total number of Algerian black citizens in the country, most of whom remain concentrated in the Saharan south. Ninety-one percent of the Algerian population lives along the Mediterranean coast on 12% of the country's total land mass.

Because most black Algerians are scattered in the vast southern Sahara, an area of the country about which many Algerians are not familiar, white Algerians may be only dimly aware, if aware at all, that they have black compatriots.25Ouzani, op.cit. Certainly, many black Algerians have reported that they face incredulity when claiming their national identity in northern Algeria at police roadblocks, airports, and even in doing everyday ordinary things like responding to a request for the time, “When I walk in the street and someone wants to ask me the time, he does it in French, convinced that he is dealing with a Nigerien or a Chadian, a way of indicating that an Algerian cannot be black.”

Amazigh activists have challenged the state’s assertion of Arab-Muslim homogeneity. Amazigh activism, in the form of mass protests and the undertakings of Amazigh-dominated political parties and civil society organizations, has pressured the state to constitutionally accept Amazigh identity as one of the components of Algerian identity, integrate the Amazigh language in secondary education, and recognize the Amazigh language as a national and later an official language of the state, in addition to Arabic

elites were also leaders of Third Worldism, and officially believed in pan-Africanism. Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first post-independence president, declared in Accra, Ghana, in 1963: “It was the imperialists who tried to distinguish between the so-called white and black Africans.”

in Saharan areas, the slave trade continued throughout the period of French settler colonialism (1830-1962)

Arab-Berber whites constructed an economy that relied on black slave labour from their Haratins (enslaved or recently freed Islamicized and Arabized Blacks, who are still susceptible to forced labour practices).31These ambiguously freed black slaves in Saharan areas of Algeria are also called Bella or Ikelan if they were enslaved by Amazighs, including Tuaregs. Today Haratins, mostly sharecroppers, work under harsh labour conditions that some have described as a modern form of slavery, they “dig and tend wells, excavate and maintain the underground channels of foggara, irrigate gardens, tend to flocks, and cultivate dates”.32Benjamine Claude Brower, “Rethinking Abolition in Algeria,” Cahier D’etudes Africaines 49, 2009 Some argue that without the labour of enslaved Black people, the Sahara would never have been habitable at all.33Ibid. The arduous and relentless work to irrigate in a desert includes digging channels tens of feet into the sand with the risk of being drowned under it.

The French accommodated slavery in the Algerian Sahara more than anywhere else. Slave masters and merchants were given permission to trade in slaves and keep those they owned well into the twentieth century.35Ibid. In exchange, slavers and merchants provided intelligence on far-off regions to colonial authorities

there is reason to believe that enslaved black people continue to be exploited for agricultural work in the southern oases of Ouargla and Ghardaia provinces to this day (among wealthy families, owners of large palm trees, fields, and farms) and in some instances among semi-nomadic Tuareg

The Algerian state has never adopted any policies, including any affirmative action policies, to help their black community emerge from the impact of generations of servitude and brutalization.40Brower, op.cit. Instead, it has sought to legitimize the country’s white Arab-Muslim identity only

descendants of freed Black slaves (Haratins) in Saharan regions of Algeria often remain dependent upon former “masters.” Most work as sharecroppers in conditions similar to slavery

Black Algerians also face discrimination in urban areas of the country. They encounter the same racist attitudes and racial insults as any other person with dark skin within Algerian borders.

Either by their colour, k’hal, which is twisted into kahlouche (blackie), mer ouba (charcoal), guerba kahla (a black gourd to hold water made out of goatskin), nigro batata (big nose that resembles a potato), haba zeitouna (black olive), babay (nigger), akli (Black slave in some Berber areas), rougi  (redhead or Swedish to imply that the black person is culturally and socially white, as everyone must want to be), saligani (from Senegal) 46Khiat, op.cit., Calling black Algerians Saligani (from Senegal) has a different history. It refers back to the early decades of the 20th century when the French utilized black West-African soldiers in their colonial army to do the dirty work of colonialization, including brutalizing members of the population that resisted French rule, taking food from farmers, and rape. or by direct references to past servile status: hartani (dark black slave or ex-slave forced to work outside the master’s house), khadim (servant), ouacif (domestic slave), ‘abd (slave), ‘abd m’cana (stinky black slave).47Ibid. Using these terms against a black Algerian passerby establishes difference, contempt, strangeness, rejection, distance, and exclusion

In addition to racial insults, a black Algerian academic has noted, “Our community continues to symbolize bad luck. Worse: in the stories of grandmothers, we play the bad roles, kidnappers of children, looters, or vagrants. [While Arabs and Berbers can both point to a proclaimed noble history in Algeria] there is no place for a black hero in the collective memory of my people.”

In addition to rejection of interracial marriages, an Algerian intellectual has reported cases of “white” Algerians refusing to room with Blacks or study with them at university

A step forward in reducing Negrophobia, the selection of Khadija Benhamou, a black woman from the Algerian Sahara, as Miss Algeria in 2019 has been marred by the subsequent deluge of posts on social media virulently claiming that she did not represent the beauty of the country, with many direct attacks against the colour of her skin.

Partly due to pressure on Algeria to control its borders from the European Union, Black sub-Saharan African migrants have been vilified by the Algerian government and some of the press;59https://insidearabia.com/algeria-desert-deportations-eu-migration/ accused – usually falsely – of violence, selling drugs, promiscuity, spreading venereal diseases, perpetuating anarchy, and raping Algerian women.

Without irony, some graffiti and social media posts called on the migrants to “Go back to Africa.”

Three generations after independence, the Algerian state is still resisting the open public debate and civil society engagement needed to reflect the country’s pluralism and to begin to reckon with slave legacies and racial discrimination

Of course, soldiers and police have been trying to bend instead of breaking — as is the Lebanese way. They understand who the real crooks are, have been and will long be: those who rule, and rob, the republic.

The response to serial, obscene injustice and indignity will not forever be the peaceful protest, the polite disagreement or the manipulated ballot box. This is a lesson from Lebanon’s own past, never mind neighboring states and societies in recent decades. 

Paragons of injustice sit atop the political order, as they have throughout this new era of independence, which has now lasted longer than each of the Lebanese civil war and the concurrent occupations by Syrian and Israeli forces. Unnamed assailants — always unnamed — have assassinated leaders, officers and officials left, right and center. Leaders and bankers have pilfered, or presided over the pilfering of, billions of dollars. Bosses have created overlapping constitutional crises, bouts of political paralysis and institutional voids. And so on.

here, the impotent and innocent continue to wait on the indifferent to do the impossible